


forward, play

by flailingthroughsanity



Series: tumblr prompts [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ficlet, Kerberos Goes Well AU, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 07:19:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15658449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailingthroughsanity/pseuds/flailingthroughsanity
Summary: If they were never apart, it wouldn’t feel so good to be together again.





	forward, play

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr prompt ask](https://spaceboykenny.tumblr.com/post/176439159336/sheith-if-they-were-never-apart-it-wouldnt-feel).
> 
> lmao I did this really quickly during lunch break so it’s a big mess ugh idk; also I took the prompt and ran away with it im sorry azra

He didn’t know what to expect. He honestly had no idea what to even  _think_ right now, pressed against the steel wall of the hall. It was dark, and Keith found himself at ease in the shadows. The overhead fluorescent lights were down, and only the faint glow from the emergency exits at the end of the hall provided any kind of illumination.

It was silent – and if he dropped a needle, he was sure he could hear it  _fall_  before clattering on the ground. Still, it wouldn’t do to linger here, where anyone can see him and they wouldn’t even need to recognize him. All they’d need to see is the outline of someone in the halls when it was strictly lights out, and the alarms would be ringing.

It was dangerous to go back, not after leaving the Garrison the way he did, but he had to—

When the drop-shuttle from the  _Kerberos_ entering Earth’s atmosphere had hit news so strongly that even old radio stations had the rickety, banged-up radio under his bed chattering about falling space men, he had to go back. Heart in his throat, hands sweating and half his soul and his entire body trembling as he crawled and tiptoed down familiar halls, towards a door he can outline and draw with his eyes closed.

The memory of taupe eyes and a gentle smile and a promise lined in his chest, crisscrossed in gold frissons over what’s between his lungs, banged against his ribs and in the crevices and grooves of his brain and it’s been so long.

And Keith – he had to see  _him—_

At least, once.

Shiro.

The thought of his name – and the fact that he’s back on  _Earth_  after twelve miserable months – has Keith’s knees shaking, and his eyes burning.

By now, the news of his expulsion must have reached even Shiro and he’d have scoured the entire base and found no trace of him. Or maybe Iverson would have soured whatever reason and justification Keith had for doing what he had to. He doesn’t know what to expect, doesn’t know what to think the moment he knocked on the steel door and feel it open, see Shiro stand before him.

Would he be angry? Disappointed at Keith for losing patience and focus? Would Keith showing up after getting a dishonorable discharge, throwing away all the work Shiro had to do to get him accepted, even matter? He was a hero, a legend already in the making – one of the first people to stand at the edge of the solar system. Keith was…a failure.

A stray thought runs through his head – and it lances like corded lightning against his heart. Would Shiro be miserable? Would he feel the same hollow in the shape of a person in his chest the way Keith had all these long months?

Shiro’s door stands before him, just the same as the rest, but the sight of it hits Keith like an asteroid.

He’s terrified – fucking scared as hell, but he can’t—

The gnawing, gaping maw in his chest the shape of Takashi Shirogane has been too much for him these last few months, and he was barely hanging on to the threads of the memories they’ve shared – each of them slowly unravelling, the details dimming and disappearing until he had to start making up for the absence—

He can’t go through that again.

He needs to see him.

Even if it’s just one last time.

With a fist that could barely be called still, Keith sucks in a deep breath and grit his teeth, preparing himself for the loss that was about to come. He knocks on the door – even and quiet, and it’s surprising how it doesn’t describe the frenzy his heart is slowly becoming.

He could be asleep, Keith thinks. He could be resting.

There are a million reasons not to do this, a dozen excuses for why he should go away and an innumerable number of ways to turn tail and run – as many as there are stars in the sky – but, just once, Keith doesn’t let himself retreat.

He bites his lip—hard enough to bleed, and the tang of it doesn’t even stop the way his hand shakes. There’s nothing but complete silence, echoing in his heart and reverberating in his ears, and he finds the weight on his chest growing stronger and heavier until—

The soft footfalls from inside, approaching the door with each passing second and Keith stills so violently, so powerfully, he’s so sure that even his heart stopped beating—

The door slides open, and the soft light from room’s bedside lamp paints the outline of the man before him in amber, but even the suffocating darkness of the hall doesn’t hide the expression on the other’s face as he takes Keith standing before him – unruly hair, jacket covered in sand and dirt and the circles under tired purple-mauve eyes—

Shiro’s eyes widen – and Keith pauses, no sound and no air escaping his parted lips as he takes in the gold-tan skin still distinct in the shadows, the light playing off the muscles of his chest under the black shirt, dark hair falling over his forehead and bigger and taller and brighter than anything Keith’s ever seen—

And the reality, the shock of it all, has him reeling because—

He’s not sure anymore of what’s  _real,_ of what’s actually reality, of what his senses are blaring for – the slight ragged breathing he can hear above his own, the faint scent of cedar and soap seeping off the gold-tan skin and the glimmer of the golden flecks in the taupe of Shiro’s gaze—he’s not sure if he’s imagining all this, if Shiro had been what kept him together and it took this long an absence for his mind to start chipping off, unable to hold together what’s been hollow since the north star faded from the sky.

There’s a sucked-in gasp – coming from Keith’s own lips – and it’s the only indication, the only sign of what’s there and what’s not the concoctions of his own miserable mind because all it takes is air and breath and the sliver of a movement in the gold of Shiro’s eyes before—

Before the whole weight of Shiro hits him like a fucking avalanche—like a ton of fucking bricks and the entire density of a star bearing on him, like a stranglehold—

It’s a good thing – a goddamn good thing – that he has his mouth open because absolutely nothing but air passes his lips, and it has to slither through whatever space is left from where Shiro’s collarbone is digging into his throat, and fuck, when did Shiro get this big—

Shiro says nothing – abso-fucking-lutely nothing – and Keith can’t blame him, fault him for it because there’s nothing worth speech. Everything he had wanted to say – all the pitiful words, the pathetic anecdotes, the winded speeches – every single syllable is dead and gone, destroyed and transformed, escaping in the faint, choked-up sounds out his lips. It’s—everything, every single one of it, the scent of cedar and the white-hot heat rushing under the gold-tan skin, the bear weight of the man Keith loved with an intensity so hard it left him aching, all of it tattooed and branded an embossed on his skin—it was too much.

Too warm. Too much. Too long. Too fucking perfect.

Shiro takes a breath, and it’s the kind of breath that splits his soul and leaves him shuddering, and it’s the kind of breath that Keith can feel in every cell of his body – every expanse of skin that has him curling in and deeper, and Shiro holds on to him with a force so tight like Keith’s smoke, wisps and shadows escaping his grasp, and it’s—fuck—it’s terrifying. The sheer desperation in every fear-lined exhale of Shiro’s breath is terrifying, because Shiro doesn’t do desperation.

He does ingenuity. He does unpredictability – and you can’t miss the gleam of a grin before the second-fast slip of steel comes for you.

This Shiro is trembling, far too heartbreakingly gentle, and liable to fall apart and if he falls apart, when Keith was barely holding on to the shards left, then they’d both be fucked.

Keith lifts his hand and pushes gently – infinitesimally – at Shiro’s shoulder, and it takes a breath or two – an entire eternity – before Shiro looks at him, gold-lined taupe eyes burning into him, cutting far deeper than the sun – the desert and the sand, the painful memory of his father running into a burning house – ever could.

“You were gone.” Shiro says, voice on the edge of fracturing – hoarse like it’s crawling up from the depths of his throat.

Keith mouths for a moment, unable to find air in enough quantities for him to breathe. When he does, his own voice is barely above the silence. “I came back.”

For you.

Because the realization – the memory of the distance, of how far apart they had been, held together by the faint thread of an echo of a promise – it hits too close to home, too deep a wound, and right now, being held by Shiro, Keith doesn’t realize he’s been trembling and shaking, crawling all the way through the sand and unaware that he’d been heading in the wrong direction. Half a heart, half a person.

And the only thing he could hold on to with the full force of a dying star was holding him now.

Shiro leans back, and looks at him, gold flecks shining – unblinking, unwavering and indomitable. Dark eyes and the curl of a deadly, devastating smile that Keith can’t pull up walls strong enough to even  _hamper_ them from breaking him. “I always knew you would.”

Blood rushes to his face, adrenaline burns through his brain and it’s just – that this is real, that this is really happening and he gasps aloud.

Shiro’s hands—large, warm, burning with a heat that suffuses in Keith’s veins, thawing the ice that had long set home in them, rise to cup his face so gently, like he’s irreplaceable and important, and then—

Shiro leans in—his mouth—on Keith’s—

And it’s every single thing he was stupid and desperate and terrified to hope for, to dream of, to put into words and outlines in the darkest parts of his imagination—and he never should have, because it feels like he made this moment possible by giving it attention, dignifying it with the content of his thoughts, the content of all days and nights he spent aching, missing Shiro so much it lefts his lungs withered and his bones splintered and this wasn’t—

He was—what he wanted, resolved and fought for, all curling into flakes of ash and smoke, held by a poorly made fire burning bright red and crimson against the sand.

What he was holds nothing against what he is right now—

Engulfed, enflamed, encompassed—taupe heat skittering and dancing down widening veins and gasped-in breaths.

Demolished, destroyed, dominated—his soul catches fire, and bright billowing light bursts through all the lines and paths under his skin.

Resurrected, recreated, reborn—every miserable day spent clothed in nightmares, every breath that bordered on the edge of a terrified sob, every second spent awake and watching the rush of meteors against a cold sky, all burning and set aflame, turning into something new, something good—

Because Shiro’s mouth fits perfectly against his, and the kiss burns like a maelstrom—a rip and tear of what he thought was real upturned, oscillating between too much and not enough; a fucking benediction and a godsend and a bright, painless surrender.

And the distance, the days spent crawling, waiting for a man on a moon at the edge of the solar system, suddenly feel so fucking worth it.

And Shiro curls a hand over his cheek, and turns his head for Keith to feel his kiss deeper and better and—his eyes have long fallen shut, his hands long wrapped around the familiar waist and his gravity carried by gold-tan skin, and he wonders – in a part of his mind that hasn’t imploded at the ache and the brightness of Shiro, larger than life, bursting through the seams and crashing back into Keith’s reality – if it’s just the kiss that sears through his bones, creeps over embers and erases the dark, inky webs the loneliness has built inside over the long months—

Or if it’s just Shiro.

It’s just Shiro, right?

Probably. Maybe. Definitely.


End file.
